Floor panels having either substantially rectangular or square shapes can be installed in various ways. Generally, it is desirable to have a floor covering composed of panels positioned together to form tight fitting joints and an outer appearance devoid of large gaps or cracks. It is also desirable that the panels be easily and quickly assembled and disassembled to reduce installation time and costs. Previous techniques in assembling snap-together paneling systems involved careful planning in positioning and laying panels end to end to form an aesthetically pleasing covering. Once the panels were laid out and presented a desired covering, they were permanently attached to an underlying floor, either by means of gluing or nailing. Disadvantages of this installation method are that installation is complex and time consuming and disassembly requires the panels be broken from the underlying floor. Further, this floor covering does not take into account the inevitable expansion or shrinkage of the floor covering and/or sub-flooring due to changes in humidity and/or temperature. Thus, the floor panels can drift apart and result in the formation of undesired gaps, for example, in those joints where the glue connection is broken.
To address these problems, various techniques for constructing impermanent as well as permanent floor coverings using interconnecting floor panels have been proposed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,006,486 discloses a flooring system in which interconnecting floor panels are engaged at the edges with tongue and groove coupling elements. These floor panels can be installed by snapping connecting edges together by means of a pure lateral translation movement or by means of a turning movement. Tongue and groove coupling joints provide both lateral and vertical locking elements between panels, whereby lateral locking elements resist movement in a direction parallel to the plane of the underlying floor and vertical locking elements resist movement in a direction perpendicular to the plane of the underlying floor. Where all of the side edges of a panel are tongue and groove joint elements, installation of such floor panels requires considerable physical manipulation to connect the floor panels without disengaging the joints of adjacent panels. Thus, floor panels that are interconnected using solely tongue and groove joints on all side edges are difficult to assemble and disassemble.
Further examples of interlocking floor panels include those commonly referred to as floating parquet flooring. The floor panels in this system are installed loosely to a sub-flooring. These floor panels mutually interconnect with each other by means of a tongue and groove coupling, and are further attached together with the application of glue at the tongue and groove connection. The floor covering obtained in this manner is difficult to disassemble. In addition, assembling the flooring system was particularly messy when the excess glue leaked from between the joints.
Additional panel designs with interconnecting elements include U.S. Pat. No. 5,050,362, which discloses construction panels for roofing and the like having interconnecting sides that “define a connection which is highly resistant to both clockwise and counter-clockwise movements applied about a connection axis” (column 3, lines 53-56). U.S. Pat. No. 3,538,819 discloses air field matting having interconnecting members. Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 4,845,907 discloses interlocking panel modules usable for decking sections in poultry operations. While these panels disclose various interconnecting means, they do not provide optimum, durable panel coupling while ensuring ease of assembly or disassembly.
Thus, these and other known panels used to form floors, walls, cladding, and the like do not effectively provide snap-together panels for various uses that may be speedily installed and/or disassembled while also providing tight joints between panels and durability of covering. Present covering systems generally involve panels with adjacent sides having couplings that are difficult to install, often requiring either substantial rotation of more than one panel to interconnect the panels or else requiring simple rotation followed by forcible action to “snap” a tongue joint element into a groove joint element. Thus, assembly and disassembly of these coverings require a great deal of time and energy. Consequently, there still exists a need for a paneling system that is aesthetically appealing, durable, and provides ease of installation and disassembly.